When we were very Beaten Up

We set off to inspect the ruins of Urush’s fortress. It lay twenty miles north of Mirath and we reached it via the teleport system and an escort from the Mirath Thieves’ guild, kindly furnished by Taim again.

We arrived at dusk, four tall towers rising out of the gloom defining the old fortress, a fortress that had seen some terrible strife judging by the great clefts torn in its curtain walls. Eldras scouted forward, taking advantage of one such break in the defences rather than risk the gatehouse with its rusty portcullis.

He reported back having found nothing but a great mound of rubble in the centre of the compound, the remains of a great keep that had met a terrible fate. We entered the fortress ruins and started to investigate each tower, starting from the North West.

In this tower we found three giant worker ants guarding several tunnels and despatched them after a brief struggle. Apart from that we found nothing else, just identical gutted towers, each containing a wrought iron staircase that descended.

We selected the south east tower for our first descent, delving deep until we emerged n a circular chamber from which led a single wide corridor. We followed it west until suddenly we were ambushed by eight ghouls appearing through an illusory wall.

Barakor threw a quick turn and five of them fled, but not before one had paralysed the dwarf. Ripven then turned the other three. Zionestes, Saladin and Roscoe finished off the three that had retreated into the chamber beyond the wall, but the others had been forced back west. Eldras and Holly set off in pursuit and then the rest of us joined in after the other three had been eliminated.

Three more fell to Roscoe, Eldras and Holly before the last two vanished into the darkness. We regrouped, Zionestes removing Barakor’s paralysis and we set off again, Barakor in the lead, only for him to walk into the returning pair of ghouls who paralysed him again.

The pair were quickly finished off though and we continued north through deserted chambers until we reached one where monsters appeared out of thin air as we entered the room. Barakor triggered the first, a giant lizard appearing across the room the moment he stepped in. Eldras, taking advantage of his spider climbing slippers raced across the ceiling to engage it.

Holly entering the room triggered another manifestation, this time a giant spider that appeared almost on top of Barakor. Eldras meanwhile dropped from the ceiling onto the giant lizard, killing it with his back stabbing, but as more of us entered the room, more beasties appeared. Holly transformed into Tiger Holly as more giant lizards appeared, a pair of giant spitting snakes, leucrottas, two hellhounds a rust monster, then another and yet another lizard.

I took out the first hound with magic missiles, it had already taken hits to be fair though. Roscoe killed the spider but with more creatures appearing all the time, things were getting desperate. Ripven was badly hurt and sooner or later poison being sprayed by the snakes was going to claim someone.

We made for the exit and I made it first but couldn’t open it. Eldras forced the door and we began to escape but Ripven now lost his armour to a rust monster. Holly tried for the exit but fell badly injured and Zionestes took a serious hit too. I fired a web spell into the room and a giant lizard, leucrotta and snake were caught by it though they were only slowed.

Ripven now fell poisoned and Zionestes and Eldras risked much trying to pull his and Holly’s bodies to safety. Another rust monster dropped into the web area but only half of the enemy were temporarily hampered. Barakor lent his strength and our wounded were pulled clear, Ripven half choked on the sweetwater potion that Eldras had used to save him. We shut the door with a horde of raging creatures still active. Our escape route cut off then and Zionestes and I had almost died too.

We were in a very sorry state, especially Ripven, whose armour had rusted away completely. Barakor lent him some pieces of armour to improve his situation but his dignity was barely protected. We decided to rest in the corridor beyond, but our suddenly best bud thieves Roscoe and Eldras decided to scout ahead whilst we were out of spells and recovering from an engagement we had triumphed in only by our heroic running away very quickly technique.*

*Perfected over many years but rarely performed with such heroic panache.

They found a couple of doors and one led to a room beyond which they glimpsed another, seemingly containing statues of some kind. They tracked back to the first door they had passed by and checking that discovered a six headed pyrohydra. Eldras calmly shut the door and chalked on it some suitably appropriate warning. He might have been better placed running like hell as the door exploded seconds later.

The entire southern wall of the hydra’s lair was destroyed and the pyrohydra blasted the corridor with fire from no less than six heads. The corridor funnelled the blast all the way down catching all of us except for Roscoe who was having one of his famous ‘Oops I really need to be somewhere else’ moments, and Holly who had used her speed to race in, throwing her spear uselessly.

Barakor who had charged to engage it also took some bite action. I was badly hurt and ran to safety with Roscoe at once after casting a slow spell on it, Zionestes was also badly burned but charged too to add his efforts to damage the creature. Ripven used his spiritual hammer and fortunately with the Hydra unable to attack owing to my spell we were able to kill it before it could do more damage. Eldras literally exploded one of its heads with his gut wrencher longsword, Saladin severed another head with his sword of sharpness.

We huddled in the remains of the room to recover our spells and strength. We had pitifully few left and would have remained crippled were it not for Ripven’s staff. This was proving a highly damaging and aggressive dungeon, more than any we have yet tackled, yet we have barely scratched its surface. Not good.